#they call me the mirror selfie taker on account of. it’s the only way i look decent in photos

[leehallfae]

may/june

[myvoicenottheoneyougiveme]

I need to keep a tally of the number of times a day you veer left and right to hold up your teetering house of cards.

But if I speak up once a week right here... I’m suddenly, actually the one exerting monumental force in a colossal effort to rewrite reality as it stands. As though that’s not “this” (your game) every second of every day, day in and day out multiple times a day, over and over and over and over and over and over again.

A never ending tumble. Something you CANT leave alone. Someone you can’t leave alone. A reflection you can’t leave alone. A source and a dumpster. A scapegoat for you to use to aggrandize yourself and your victimhood.

You’ll excuse me if I read absolutely zero sincerity coming from someone just trying to get me to bend over and take “this”. You’ll excuse me if your actions speak louder than your words. You’ll excuse me if I read your attempts as nothing more than ploys to regain leverage on me. You mean what you say for five seconds before you don’t immediately get the reactions you want. When you “give” the way you always did, it is “instrumental”. You’re out to get a payoff. You don’t mean anything. You just want to “get”. Control, attention, affection, dominance over your source of supply and a reinforcement of the channel into which you dump everything in your reflection you want to distance yourself from.

You saw me “taking an interest” in a character I haven’t gotten to know at all, who has the same appeal as any character in her vein, perhaps even more so than the one she’s contrasted with. You then made a play with the feed. It was far too subtle, but there were a few stops there. All I saw was someone teeing me up for what came next. Rather than a genuine admission of fault or a sign of accountability (LOL) by the nebulous and insincere being behind “this”, you were opportunistically trying to capitalize on an opening, and you didn’t get the reaction you wanted.

The only way for you to deal with that fact, the only way for you to ever deal with rejection or invalidation is to make me into something or someone less than human. It was too subtle, in the first place, if you ask me. But it’s not like the door was exactly open to you all things considered. But the vibe, the pattern was illuminated by contrast with what came next. So, now that you’ve made some great display for 5 seconds as being the one who gets on their knees and “gives” and makes concessions and isn’t actually the taker/trampler in “this” picture--OH BABY FORGIVE ME, [keeps scrolling]--now you have a foothold or solid ground from which to launch your next move. Cause I clicked and SAVED that picture. 

Rejecting the “sincere” (wink wink) attempts to.... well do what exactly? Isn’t that where the wheels fall off? Actions, louder than words. But in the reality where you’ve made some kind of bullshit-sorry scratch-heartfelt plea, the person that denies you has to no right to, is that what you’re telling me? No one has a right to say “no” to you, is that what you’re telling me? OH, but you slithered into the ether behind the screen and donned the caricature; you GIVE so much...

The person that means anything they give, is the one capable of taking “no” for an answer. What is truly selfless is given without thought of reward. What is truly meant, is meant regardless of the response you get. How many times? How many times when you would disappoint or reject or say “not now”, did I ever meltdown and call you names?

The one that stands out to me the most? What I was meant to believe was some kind of genuine moment of connection, like so many before it. How many times? I remember this time because it was the first time I’d heard that group in years. “Come on come on... I’m taking you home. No one, no one belongs here more than you.”

AWW, NO THATS OK

Oh. Well, then I guess I’ll, see you tomorrow?

But I digress... by virtue of the fact that you made a momentary selfie of a display, you could now say that the fact that I saw that and didn’t return an affection in kind... Oh, what a taker I am. Oh, how I just squeeze the life out of you. Oh, feed me feed me. Make me feel wonderful. Lift me up.

DA KING

Like I received it at all in the first place, or like it makes me feel any kind of anything when it’s coming from someone as disingenuous as you. Oh, but it was given, and I saw it and I... I what? Rejected it? No no no, you, you downloaded that picture GRRRR. Ya, I downloaded a piece of fan art off the internet. And from this piece, you can extrapolate an entire new me, an entire straw man against which you can cast yourself in contrast. You’re gonna tell me what things are, tell me what I think about them, tell me what they mean to me, tell me who I am. Which makes you, what? That’s right. And I don’t even mean the implied meaning of that sentence there, where you’re head is so big, you know me better than I know myself. I mean precisely what I’ve been describing. You tell me, you shout it from the rooftops and on the hillsides before the whole world, and that makes you.... NOT that. Not whatever you are pointing and screaming about me. You get to be NOT the thing you paint me as when you paint me as that.

Make me one thing, makes you another thing.

That’s my whole point. “This” can never end. What you get out of “this”, is myriad, but it’s simply allowing you to bolster a reflection about yourself at someone else’s expense. Your colossal never-ending exertion day in and day out every moment of every day, every chance you get multiple times a day.... SERIOUSLY, if I’m such an awful evil terrible person, WHY would you seek to POSSESS me? Oh, well, I just, it’s just my tragic flaw. Oh, I’m such a victim, I can’t help being drawn to destructive men. Oh, everyone see, see, I’m so helplessly enamored with this guy that rejects me and tells me how awful I am and all these terrible terrible lies. Oh me oh my. Feel sorry for me, everyone.

“This” can go in so many directions but every single one, is where you get to play the victim. For every turn there’s a reversal, and we need only NEVER look at how the rules the rest of us live by don’t apply to you. We need not ever look at what YOU are doing to me. No no no. We can’t have that. Then you’re naming me the very same person that’s in your mirror as you’re being that person.

You do “this” to me. You stalk me. You harass me. You wage a colossal effort with so many moving parts... to? To what? OH, I’m just protecting myself. I’m just holding YOU, that’s right, YOU accountable. I’m sorry, are we in a “relationship”? Are we anything? No, but but ...Ok, all you do is scream and point fingers endlessly, day in and day out. You live to lift yourself up on that throne of lies and to rope in as many people as you possibly can. You sure you don’t need “this”? You sure you don’t need to feel powerful and in control? Who is “this” for? Who? You are constantly scratching and clawing and trying to get attention back on yourself and to create openings and to improvise anything and everything you can to empower yourself and to justify yourself and to give you license to be GOD on earth... for WHAT? For WHO?

Every second you have access to me is another second you can spend flailing around on the ground like someone having a seizure at the scene of a car crash. (This is a joke people say sometimes, “I’ll practice my twitching and drooling”.) EVERYONE EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION TO YOU. Oh, oh oh, how awful. Oh, my, what has he done this time my dear? She drove headlong fullspeed into the side of my... SHUTUP NOBODY ASKED YOU, we were asking HER.

I mean you could make a rear-end collision somehow the driver-in-front-of-you’s fault. And what’s worse? I’m somehow obligated to you. I owe you, someone I’ve said “no” to. I’m not moving. I’m not moving. I’m not opening the door. I want nothing to do with you. I’m not trapping you making your life a prison or trying to squeeze a damned thing out of you as I say it either. I’m simply DONE. So, when you get a running start and break your poor wittle neck diving head first into a closed door? Oh, that’s just MORE PROOF. MORE PROOF. See, look what he’s done to our princess! See, her broken body!

This rant brought to you by, a singular instance of worn patience and/or a chosen battle. But if I speak up at all, suddenly I’m doing everything you’re doing to me every second of every day, day in and day out.

I have to be the parts of your reflection you don’t want. I have to be guilty of the things you’re actually responsible for and then some, so you never have to hold yourself accountable. It’s a power trip. It’s a damned ego trip.

The moment I, I exert any effort in trying to pry you, PSYCHO, off of my neck, I’m suddenly to blame for everything that’s actually... you. As though you weren’t doing any of these things. You, by virtue of being the one shouting the longest and the loudest and the most often, you take all attention off of your insecurities and put them on your scapegoat. You get all the attention you want and none that you don’t. But it’s yourself you’re hiding from. You get to feel like someone else. You get to feel like the victim.

To rewrite reality, to hide from your own reflection, requires and CONSTANT never-ending stream of mirroring. To maintain your self-regard and protect yourself from your own insecurities, you mount a colossal effort to never EVER face up to what you don’t want to face up to. Just the act of attacking me whether you get anything from me or not, cause it’s all the time, all the time, never stops. Everywhere all the time. Just the act of attacking me is solidifying your reflection. It doesn’t matter if it never pans out. It doesn’t matter if it’s never true. It doesn’t matter. You are playing a never-ending perpetual-motion game of hopscotch when the floor in the cracks is lava. It’s a race to outrun what you can’t ever actually finally outrun for good, yourself.

You have to fight and scratch and claw and live and breathe “This” game you play on my life, because it’s how you regulate yourself and your own emotional states. “This” house of cards WILL blow over without a constant never ending input from you and those you conscript. It’s both outside in the reflections you get, but it’s inside more than anything.

I don’t need to know you or what you’re thinking, to see and know what you’re doing. It’s a frantic desperate, never-ending effort of such massive proportions to, in lieu of squeezing me for all the time and attention you can get, making me something you can set yourself in contrast with. ...All day, every day, it’s the same thing, over and over and over and over again. Possess, own, dominate, control, coerce, extort, manipulate... scratch and claw and beat down and... I reject you. I deny you. I said “no” to you. I said, “get help” and we’ll come back at another time. We have to work on ourselves. We can’t do “this”. You didn’t take “no” for an answer. You escalated.

But I’m really not convinced, “this” ever amounted to anything in reality. But still, even if I suspend my disbelief for a moment... you didn’t take “no” for an answer. And every rejection, every sting of invalidating rejection, puts you into a position you can’t be in, face to face with all of your insecurities and all of the things that have ever gone wrong for you in relationships that you CANT bear any responsibility in. The more I don’t budge, the more the wall pushes back, the more adamant I’ve been forced to become, the more I’ve attempted then to hold up a mirror to your psycho behavior because you WONT FUCKING STOP, then the more you have to HAVE TO make me into some kind of villain. What other choice do you have? Sink into all of your self-loathing despair? Come face to face with all of your negative self-talk and all the ways you actually blame yourself? But it’s all or nothing. It’s always all or nothing. It’s always 1 or 0. One of us is everything wrong with the world (not because either of us necessarily actually is), and it sure as hell isn’t going to be you. That’s the zero sum game you’re playing with yourself. There is hatred and loathing and blame blame blame, and SOMEONE has to bear it.

It’s the conversation between Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. Someone HAS TO BE RESPONSIBLE, HAS TO BE TO BLAME, because otherwise it’s her fault. That’s completely between her and herself. That’s not coming from anyone but herself. That absolutely ZERO SUM game. ...Trauma.

I don’t care if you’re a narcissist or anything. I only care that you’re abusive, and that I can’t stand you. Someone has to be the sacrifice for everything wrong in your YOUR world because of this false choice. What you get out of “this” in lieu of “supposedly” an interest in ME of all people, is a scapegoat for what otherwise is eating you alive every second of every day.

Direct it at me then, that’s what happens. Direct it at me then. Let your rage and hatred and anger and toxic caustic bile that’s destroying you, instead destroy me. Because it’s bubbling up every second of every day, you’re bubbling up passing it all on directly to me. “This” monumental effort to install a new reality, to hold up a house of cards, every second of every day, unrelenting, without end. Put it on me, force it down my throat, cast yourself as the victim and everything right with “this” picture. Gaslight me. Triangulate everyone within reach. 

Everything, everything. And you sleep around, but I’m an awful sleazy horny piece of shit. Cause you can’t be a whore. You name it, if it’s a part of you and it makes you feel badly (whether warranted or not), I have to be it. Stalker names STALKER. Stalker director of “this” show names, BAD TRAMPLER OF BOUNDARIES. BEWARE everyone, don’t give him the wrong idea, you won’t be rid of him. You, you, you say this. You the person doing “this” says this. But that’s why you refer so frequently. Because that’s your reflection every second of every day.

I am the means, the vehicle to you managing your reflection. When you’re feeling any kind of way, you regulate it through me. You will have your way with me. You will get whatever you want from me, and you will not be denied. And you will not be held responsible for your own actions, and you will not be told no, and you will not be told that what you’re doing is wrong, and you will not be held accountable for the harm you knowingly inflict. What you get is as myriad as what your aim is at any given relative moment, but the pattern is simple...

You want love and affection and attention the same as anyone else, and you have deep wounds that torment you. The first is an attempt to medicate the second. Whether from failure at the first or skipping straight to the second, it all HAS TO BE REGULATED through SOMEONE. Something, someone outside of yourself. Whether that’s gathering as many people as possible to yourself at any given moment and wielding power that way over your reflection or scapegoating me. There are simply things in the reflection you get from me that you CANT deal with. Whether that’s rejection or calling you out for being abusive and daring to put a label on it as if it needed it.

Every second of every day, you are attempting to right the ship. Every second of every day is an attempt to reverse reality, whatever part of it is making you feel especially insecure and down on yourself at any given moment. All of “this” is to get out of me what you NEED to soothe and regulate yourself at any given moment. In lieu of getting a one-sided one-way street kind of relationship where you are bathed in love and affection as though I were your parent and you not obligated to behave like a human being or maintain any semblance whatsoever of a balanced reciprocal ANYTHING (relationship?! LOL), you put on me the darkness you then otherwise feel between you and yourself.

Zero-sum. False choice. You the evil awful terrible object that is everything wrong with the world because that’s the infantile state you would be otherwise reduced to. Instead of being to blame for being rejected, harmed, invalidated, neglected, instead of being the object of your own rage, you place me there.

There are many stories, I want to finally finish. Life is Strange being one of them. But I’m never going to forget that bit from that conversation. About half-way through, in the truck, friend trying to talk sense into her. Blaming everyone, blaming the whole world, putting all on everyone else... why? Because the only alternative was to feel that toward herself.

Trauma. Zero-sum. And that was your chosen representation/character and point of identification.

You don’t have to have a fancy psychological label to be doing this. People are so much more complicated than that. And there’s a long gradient between fully self-aware and just being completely reactive chaos playing out a pathological pattern. The difference between you and your partner in crime (literally) is marked, always was.

But you are torturing me. You are killing me. You have been for years.

Zero-sum.

The lengths you go to, it’s zero-sum. Not because it is, but because that’s how you experience it. Because the pain and the trauma you carry necessitates it, “this” is how you cope.